Author:William Trevor
A Bit on the Side - Twelve remarkable stories by the master storyteller William Trevor
'Compassionate, poignant, even heart-rending. Almost perfect works of art by perhaps the greatest short story writer now working in English' Sunday Independent
William Trevor is truly a Chekhov for our age. In these twelve stories, a waiter divulges a shocking life of crime to his ex-wife; a woman repeats the story of her parents' unstable marriage after a horrible tragedy; a schoolgirl regrets gossiping about the cuckolded man who tutors her; and, in the volume's title story, a middle-aged accountant offers his reasons for ending a love affair. At the heart of this stunning collection is Trevor's characteristic tenderness and unflinching eye for both the humanizing and dehumanizing aspects of modern urban and rural life.
If you enjoyed The Story of Lucy Gault and Love and Summer, you will love this book. It will also be adored by readers of Colm Toibin, George Saunders and James Joyce.
'A treat ... each meditate[s] on the subject of love - adulterous, unspoken, clandestine, sometimes cruel. Whether set in rural Ireland or London, their pages whisper of relished secrets and dreams foolishly clung to' Mail on Sunday
William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written eighteen novels and novellas, and hundreds of short stories, for which he has won a number of prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement. In 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. His books in Penguin are: After Rain; A Bit on the Side; Bodily Secrets; Cheating at Canasta; The Children of Dynmouth; The Collected Stories (Volumes One and Two); Death in Summer; Felicia's Journey; Fools of Fortune; The Hill Bachelors; Love and Summer; The Mark-2 Wife; Selected Stories; The Story of Lucy Gault and Two Lives.
One of the funniest writers in the English language... Saki was incapable of writing a dull sentence, but the final lines of his short stories are works of art in themselves
—— Daily TelegraphRead Saki, shiver, then smile. In his mixture of the exotic with the wholly English, of brazen charm with unapologetic spite, he stands alone
—— IndependentSaki writes like an enemy. Society has bored him to the point of murder. Our laughter is only a note or two short of a scream of fear
—— V. S. PritchettSaki's stories are highly relevant to any society in which convention is confused with morality, and all societies confuse convention with morality, so he'll always be relevant
—— Will SelfSaki remains, from a distance of a hundred years, just about the sharpest, cruellest, funniest and most elegant short story writer in our language... Saki is like a perfect martini but with absinthe stirred in...heady, delicious and dangerous. Enjoy
—— Stephen FryThese stories are cut-glass beauties, pitiless and hard-edged and constantly poking fun at the pretensions of the middle and upper classes... Crisp, funny and perfectly targeted
—— Naomi Alderman , GuardianHis stories...bear the hallmarks of Oscar Wilde and Henry James, are as funny as Wilde, Wodehouse and Waugh, possess plotting exquisite enough to bear significant elaboration but rarely last longer than three pages, and are brought off with a wonderfully light touch, while presenting a disturbingly chilling portrait of humankind
—— GuardianMy favourite writer of all time is the satirical Edwardian writer HH Munro, who was also known as Saki. He had a very black sense of humour and some of his short stories are so incredibly dark and irreverent that you just can’t help but laugh
—— Clarissa Dickson Wright , Daily ExpressHis tales are loaded with death and destruction, as well as a heavy dose of flippancy and cynicism. They are peppered with clever, cutting epigrams and usually end with a grim twist. And there are animals - lots of them
—— GuardianSaki is among those few writers, inspirational when read at an early age, who definitely retain their magic when revisited decades later
—— Christopher HitchensThese delicious, hilarious and yet surgical satires are amongst the finest short stories in the English language
—— Alexei SayleLike her peers David Nicholls and Marian Keyes, possesses the enviable gift of making the reader laugh in the gloomiest of circumstances
—— Independent on SundayMasterful. Transforms the every day into something rich.
—— Time Out on Consequences